Traveling musically

I always tell myself that I don't much care for "impressionism" in music (usually described as a style of music written between about 1890 and 1925).  And I guess I don't.  I don't hate it.  I just don't go out of my way to listen to it.

But I love travel to foreign countries.  And travel evoked by impressionism was what the Seattle Symphony's concert last night was all about.

The concert began with Jacques Ibert's haunting Escales (or Ports of Call), offering flavors ("impressions," if you will) of Palermo, north Africa, and Valencia.  The sounds of northern Africa were especially romantic, with the wailing of the oboe suggesting a stereotype of "Oriental" music, and the Valencia movement was filled with Spanish themes.

Respighi's well-known Fountains of Rome suggested the sounds of four famous Roman fountains at various times of day.  And to travel among these Mediterranean ports, one best travels by sea -- hence, the major work of the evening, the changing moods of Debussy's La Mer.

But the number that appealed most to me -- and, judging from the applause, to most of the audience -- was a piece not even on the scheduled program, a piece untouched by impressionism. Because of the illness of the scheduled pianist, the performance of Alexander Scriabin's early-career piano concerto was scratched, and was replaced by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23.  The pianist, Inon Barnatan, hypnotized me and the entire audience with his smooth, buttery, almost liquid playing of the Adagio movement, and, even more notably, of the two fast movements. 

Looking back, I realize that I enjoyed the opening Ibert number the best of the three impressionist compositions.  By the time we reached La Mer, the concluding work, the rambling style of impressionism, apparently lacking in structure -- the program notes did emphasize that La Mer does have structure, and could almost be considered a symphony, but I was having none of it -- had begun to bore me, and I was checking my watch.

It was the Mozart concerto, and the brilliant playing of Barnatan, that really made the evening worthwhile for me.  If I ever again attend a performance of La Mer, I hope it's performed nearer the beginning of the program before my mind has begun to drift.